In September 2007 I was hired jointly by Transvideo Studios and Google, both headquartered in Mountain View California. Transvideo had a contract with Google and took care of 100% of their video production in Mountain View, and sometimes elsewhere. My labor was sold to Google in the form of a 9-5 job. I had access to a personally unprecedented amount of privileges, but was not entitled to the ski trips, DisneyLand adventures, stock options, and holiday cash bonuses from their team of temporary Santa Clauses. Thousands of people with red badges (such as me, my team, and most other contractors) worked amongst thousands of people with white badges (as Full-time Googlers). Interns are given green badges. However, a fourth class exists at Google that involves strictly data-entry labor, or more appropriately, the labor of digitizing. These workers are identifiable by their yellow badges, and they go by the team name ScanOps. They scan books, page by page, for Google Book Search. The workers wearing yellow badges are not allowed any of the privileges that I was allowed – ride the Google bikes, take the Google luxury limo shuttles home, eat free gourmet Google meals, attend Authors at Google talks and receive free, signed copies of the author’s books, or set foot anywhere else on campus except for the building they work in. They also are not given backpacks, mobile devices, thumb drives, or any chance for social interaction with any other Google employees. Most Google employees don’t know about the yellow badge class. Their building, 3.1459~, was next to mine, and I used to see them leave everyday at precisely 2:15 PM, like a bell just rang, telling the workers to leave the factory. Their shift starts at 4 am.
I found this social arrangement interesting, and at a certain point I decided to investigate the rationale behind Google’s decision to exclude the yellow badge class from most privileges the company has to offer, despite the fact that their labor takes place in a Google building with a Google sign out front and are being contracted to Google by another company just like my team, and just like other informational laborers, the kitchen staff, the shuttle drivers, the custodians, and more.
Eventually I asked a superior on my team if I could borrow a camera to go out in the parking lot and videotape the yellow-badged workers leaving the 3.1459~ factory. That footage didn’t turn out very well so I did it again a week later. I decided if I were to represent these workers leaving the factory, it would be important to develop a relationship with the filmed subjects and welcome their perspective into the video. A week later I approached a few of them to see if they would be willing to have a conversation in the near future about their jobs. The first girl mostly ignored me and started talking to someone on her cell phone. Two other young men said they’d be happy to talk about their work and accepted business cards with my email address. Another young man I approached was also willing to discuss his work. About the job, he briefly said that “it’s not what I want to be doing but it pays the bills.” Before I could give him my email address, a very agitated chubby white male with a red badge wedged himself between us and demanded that I show him my badge and tell him who my manager was. He told me the yellow-badged workers were “extremely confidential people” doing “extremely confidential work”, and I was standing in an “extremely confidential area”. He then reprimanded the yellow-badge worker for talking to me. I then found out the chubby white man knew what I was doing because the first girl I had spoken to had followed the instructions on the back of her yellow badge – which is to call a certain manager if anyone asks about the work of the yellow badge class. The chubby white man brought me into the lobby of the 3.1459~ building and told me to wait while he grabbed a security guard, a security guard with a red badge and therefore more privileges than the yellow badged ScanOps employees working in the same building as him. He returned with a very sedate black guard and explained the situation. The guard wasn’t aware of how confidential the work within the building actually was, but agreed to report this to his superiors in Google’s campus meat space security. I walked 40 feet out of the extremely confidential area and into my building to continue working.
The next morning, I received a call from one of my managers who I’ll refer to as Marco. Google Security had told him about what happened the day before and wanted to “finalize the issue”, which apparently means coming to a conclusion on the reason and outcome of the security breach so that the issue can be filtered and separated neatly into their bracketed accounts. I told Marco my reasons, which you’ll hear in just a moment and he passed along my statements to Google Security. Shortly thereafter Marco called me back and asked if I’d get on a conference call with Ralph, the millionaire who owns Transvideo. I had met the man once and he didn’t know who I was, so this conference call made me quite anxious. Ralph got on the phone and said “So Marco tells me you’re writing an exposé piece on Google”. He told me the issue was very serious because it could jeopardize Transvideos contract with Google and potentially lead to 60 people losing their jobs. I explained my actual intents to Ralph, and Marco chimed in to say he never told Ralph it was to be an expose. Ralph asked me to issue a letter to Google security explaining my intent. Here is that letter :
To Whom It May Concern,
Yesterday I was outside the Google Book Search building, which is adjacent to the building I work in, and had the chance to talk to a few employees while they were leaving work. Most of them are people of color and are supposedly involved in the labor of digitizing information. I’m interested in issues of class, race, and labor, and so out of general curiosity I wanted to ask these workers about their jobs. I am aware of internal mechanisms for discussing labor issues with Google, and had no intention of defaming the company. I was not aware of how secretive the Book Search project is, but now understand how seriously my curiosity could jeopardize not only my own job and Transvideos’ relationship with Google, but also my legal situation because of the non-disclosure agreement I signed.
I apologize for bothering you with this innocent mistake and can assure you that in the future I will be more cautious about respecting confidentiality at Google.
Sincerely,
Andrew Wilson
Immediately after I sent the letter to Ralph and Marco for review, Ralph wrote back to me :
> Thanks Andrew. I think this will help clear up any misunderstandings.
>
> Also, Marco said that you had mentioned that this
> was a “personal project” relating to the request
> you made for an interview with one of the staff.
> Can you elaborate what this personal project is?
>
> Thanks again,
>
> – Ralph
I responded :
Hello Ralph,
The personal project at this point is nothing beyond a general curiosity towards the ScanOps workers. I don’t know enough about the situation to pursue any further understanding and now that I know it’s so super-secret, I probably never will have the chance to. I think Google does a lot of great things socially and politically but found it interesting that these workers, who perform labor similar to that of many red-badge contractors, such as software engineers, custodians, security guards, etc., are mostly people of color and cannot eat Google meals, take the shuttle, ride a bike, or step foot anywhere else on campus. With backgrounds in sociology and political philosophy, I wasn’t approaching this as an act of muckraking, but rather as an analysis of the transition from industrial labor to information labor and what this could mean in terms of race and class.
Also, I saw this as a nice way to meet people who work right next to me but are very clearly not the same class as me.
Best, Andrew
More than an hour passed so I figured Google security was satisfied with my explanation and had finalized the issue. But Marco called back in a frenzy, saying that Google security had proof of me outside, filming yellow-badged workers leaving the 3.1459~ building on two separate occasions. I told him this was true and he said that Google legal was now involved, and they needed the video tapes immediately. I found one of the tapes in my bag and brought it to Marco but confessed that I couldn’t find the other tape. He relayed this information to Google Security and Google Legal, and they reiterated that they needed the tape immediately. The only place I could imagine it would be was back in my room in San Francisco, and Marco relayed the command of “go get it right now” back to me. I borrowed a co-workers car and drove 40 minutes to San Francisco, searched my room for a half hour, and came up with nothing. On my way back I called Marco to tell him I found nothing, and said I must have used the same tape for both shoots and taped over the first day’s footage with that of the second day. This isn’t what happened but I really could not (and still cannot) find the tape, and I knew Marco needed a conclusive answer for Google Security and Google Legal. He got back in touch with them and then called me back, telling me to return to the Transvideo office instead of my office at Google. When I arrived Marco told me to wait in the sunset conference room. This is the room where I signed on with the Transvideo team at Google and had my quarter-year reviews. Marco entered the room with Burt, the general manager of Transvideo who hired me and executed my reviews. Burt had a questionnaire to which my answers were :
-I was given permission to use the camera by Carl, a superior. -The tape I used was mine. -I do not have possession of the footage I shot anymore and it does not exist in any other form.
Burt then presented me with a document that would terminate my employment on the basis of me using Google’s video equipment during working hours (although it was during my lunchbreak) without the approval of Transvideo’s executive management. Marco then interjected into Burt’s official explanation to say that Google was actually putting pressure on Transvideo to fire me because of my investigations of the 3.1459~ building and the people who work there. Burt followed me back to Google and gave me a cardboard box to pack my non-Google issued belongings up. I told him I could take the shuttle home, as I’ve gotten on without my badge numerous times, but he insisted on driving me to the CalTrain station. On the drive over I told him that losing my job right now isn’t all that bad, as I was planning to quit in two months to prepare for grad school. He said that everything happens for a reason, and that he was glad I was being “philosophical” about it. I told him that that’s not really philosophy and he didn’t have much to say after that.
I boarded the CalTrain with my cardboard box and made it home around 8 pm.